Letters to Philip: Chapter one

Byline2:

Savannah

Many long-time readers will recall “Letters to Elena,” a feature that followed our fictional romance with an actual email scammer who went by the name “Elena.” After several months of convincing Elena that we wanted to bring her to America so she could be indoctrinated into our ancient cult of Ghostbusting gold hoarders, Elena broke it off. We were understandably heartbroken. But fate never closes a door without opening a window, especially when there are foreigners out there hungry for our bank account information. So then it was fate that one day...

Dear Dad/Mom.

It’s the pleasure of mine coupled with my sister’s pleasure to contact you.

I am Prince Philip Johnson and I live in Ghana with my sister Princess Saraphina Johnson, we are refugees. We lost our parents in the war in my country and we were among the kids rescued to Ghana by UN Forces...

We have our inheritance boxes here in Ghana which our late father, His Royal Highness King Musinga Johnson of Kreo Community in Sudan deposited here for safekeeping purpose due to the war situation in our country over the years. The 2 boxes contain $21 million dollars and 75kg of uncut diamonds respectively, but the security company doesn’t know the exact contents because our father deposited them as “FAMILY VALUABLES”.

My questions are these below:

1. Please can you receive these boxes for us as our foreign guardian and trustee?

2. Can we trust you in helping us?

3. What percentage do you think that will be okay for you?

Please think about this and reply us as soon as possible for us to know what to do immediately. Take good care and God bless you and your family till we hear from you. Our sincere regards to your entire family.

Regards

Philip Musinga Johnson

My prayers had been answered. Not only was there a fresh email scammer to exchange non-sequiters with, but this one thought I was his dad! I quickly dashed off a response:

Prince Philip-

I am very sorry to hear about your plight. I flew over Ghana once on my way to an Australian holiday. From the air, your country looked like a fungal infection and I’m sure things are no better on the ground.

The answers to your questions are as follows:

1) Yes, I can receive these boxes. It would be an honor to assist the TRUE royal family of Ghana in their struggles against the evil revolutionaries.

2) Absolutely. I have taken nearly three hours of karate classes and have been named an honorary black belt by the Mort Stevenson Academy of Self-Defense. If anyone want to take your boxes, I will immediately call Mort and he will take care of them if he’s not busy.

3) Before we talk numbers, I’d want to be sure of something. Don’t get me wrong; these look like real boxes full of Ghanan gold and diamonds, but I have a friend who specializes in boxes full of Ghananadian gold and diamonds, and I’d want him to look at it first.

Your faithful servant

Barry “Patsy” Kaufman

I emailed my devoted son back on a Monday, but I must have ironically gotten caught in his spam filter. I got the following on Thursday, with the subject header HELLO DADDY:

Hello Daddy,

Good day Daddy i am really worried as i have receive any mail from you since you agree to be our guardian its my joy writing from here and we wish that God continue to bless you.

Thanks we await your response

Regards

Prince Philip

Since I didn’t want to keep the little rascal waiting, I wrote back as soon as possible:

You are impatient, my son. I in fact did write you back right away, and this is this the first I’ve heard from you.

As I said in my last email, I would need to see pictures of these Ghanan treasure boxes to run by a friend of mine who specializes in boxes full of gold and jewels smuggled out of Ghana. It is a tradition in my country dating back to our founding fathers, The Old Man, Rick, Big Hoss and Chumlee (note: that’s actually just the cast of the reality show “Pawn Stars”).

Please email the photos of these boxes as soon as possible so that I might verify their authenticity, and we will proceed from there.